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Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

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Famous Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

“Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.”

MeanLittlesArtTodayGamesWinningViewsOpinionTomorrowSolitudeApproachCriticismEmptyOppositesInfiniteCleverUselessWorks Of ArtMeaninglessPartisansHardenedLiterary CriticismToday And Tomorrow
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.”

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Book:Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
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“Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.”

WayWantDoeArtRealThreeLiteratureExistenceHalfPracticeKnowingExampleCriticismDenyProfessionNeighborJournalismArtisticQuartersUnrealReal Ones
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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“It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead.”

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Book:The Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus: A Dual Language Edition
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